Image caption Ajit Atwal says there was little consultation with locals before asylum seekers were housed in the area

Each year, thousands of asylum seekers are rehoused across the UK. But in some areas residents say they are not happy with the influx, or the lack of communication.

“It’s a fantastic area, very-close knit community. One of those areas where all the neighbours are on first name terms with each other,” Ajit Atwal tells the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire programme.

He was a vocal opponent of a plan to convert a student halls of residence in Derby into an Initial Accommodation Centre for 225 asylum seekers.

Hundreds of people signed a petition against the centre, but it opened and the first arrivals began moving in last month.

Ajit says they have had little information from private security firm G4S, which runs the centre.

Image caption The Initial Accommodation Centre will house 225 asylum seekers once it is fully occupied

“They should’ve consulted with people and given reassurance that ‘we’re here to work with you and any concerns you’ve got come to us directly. You can get on with life and the refugees here can get on with their life’.”

In recent years private security firm G4S has housed more asylum seekers than any other provider.

Asylum seekers are only supposed to be in Initial Accommodation Centres for a maximum of 19 days, while the Home Office decides whether they are destitute – before they are housed elsewhere in the country.

A multi-billion pound government contract to provide initial and longer term accommodation for the next 10 years is currently out to tender and G4S is hopeful of getting the green light.

But they have faced criticism.

Image caption Mark Harris says he was told of the centre “out of the blue”

“I picked this area for [many reasons] – it’s close to town, [good for] my future, it’s everything it provides for me,” says Mark Harris, who says he is worried about his property and his family.

“Then one day I get told out of the blue, now’t to do with me, ‘Oh by the way you’re having 240 asylum seekers on your doorstep and guess what, you can’t do anything about it’.”

Janet Fuller, who manages an advice centre for Derby’s refugees and asylum seekers, recognises such concerns, but is keen to point out that those entering the country are “vetted very strongly” by the Home Office.

G4S said in a statement that prior to the centre opening it “held a public consultation event and gave regular statements to local newspapers who covered the planning process”, and later attended a public meeting to update residents on its progress.

“The feedback from the vast majority of local residents has been positive”, it added.

‘Treated like slaves’

Many asylum seekers say they have also been ill-treated by G4S and the dispersal system, having been sent to an unfamiliar part of the country.

“Usually the G4S people, they give you accommodation where no-one else wants to live and life is very difficult – crime is very high, there’s prostitution, addiction,” says one female asylum seeker.

She did not want to be named for fear of reprisals from the firm for speaking out.

She claims that when in need of help, G4S had ignored her attempts to contact them.

In January 2017, a Home Affairs Committee report found some asylum seekers had been placed in accommodation infested by rats, mice and insects after arriving in the UK, and called the conditions a “disgrace”.

G4S said all its properties were subject to inspections to ensure they met the standards set by the Home Office.

“There are over 4,000 inspections conducted every month by G4S and the Home Office, and local authorities also conduct random, no-notice inspections,” it said.

“We always take complaints about the accommodation we provide very seriously.”

But Mr Grayson is adamant that G4S should not be given the 10-year contract.

“There could be legal action to stop them,” he says.

A Home Office spokeswoman said: “The UK has a proud history of granting asylum to those who need our protection and we are committed to providing safe and secure accommodation while applications are considered.

“The Home Office maintains an active partnership with local authorities across the UK and funds Strategic Migration Partnerships to plan for the most appropriate dispersal of asylum seekers and increase the number of areas who can support people seeking asylum.

Watch the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire programme on weekdays between 09:00 and 11:00 on BBC Two and the BBC News Channel.

The student is whispering now: “Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School is being shot up.”

“It’s being shot up? Are you at the school?”

The caller whispers something.

“I can’t hear you,” says the responder. “Are you at the school?”

There’s a pause. Then the caller hangs up.

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Media captionFootage posted on social media captures the moment the gunman opened fire

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Media captionThese are some of the messages students sent their loved ones during the shooting

The day everything changed

That Valentine’s Day, the lives of 3,300 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School pupils in Parkland, Florida, changed forever.

The shooter killed 17 people. Others are still fighting for their lives in hospital.

It’s become an almost unremarkable event in modern America: This was already the sixth school shooting of 2018 in the US.

But this time was different. Because instead of just accepting it for part of daily life, this group of 16, 17 and 18-year-olds decided that guns were tearing apart communities and that too many innocent people were dying.

This is the story of how they started a political movement in just a month.

They have a clear message: “Never Again”.

Image copyrightGetty Images

The seed of the campaign was planted less than 24 hours after the attack.

Gathering in a local park with candles, students were embracing their friends, talking to the media or grieving quietly.

“That’s when we all held hands together and said ‘This is where there’s going to be change. This is where it’s going to be different’,” Jared, a Marjory Stoneman Douglas student, tells Newsbeat.

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Media captionFred Guttenberg said he couldn’t remember if he had told his daughter Jaime that he loved her

That was a Thursday. By the weekend, the Never Again movement was up and running.

It was amplified on social media with hashtags including #NeverAgain, #MarchForOurLives, #WhatIf and #IWillMarch.

But this time, it was much more than an online movement which politicians could ignore.

Tweeting “thoughts and prayers” wouldn’t be enough this time.

It was a real movement, with real people, in real life.

Image copyrightGetty Images

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Media captionStudent to lawmakers “Shame on you”

Calling ‘BS’ on gun culture

Never Again would culminate with a demonstration on Washington DC which the campaign was calling the March For Our Lives.

Its first major piece of media coverage came on the Saturday with an emotionally charged speech by Emma Gonzalez.

“[To] companies trying to make caricatures of the teenagers these days, saying that all we are is self-involved and trend-obsessed, and they hush us into submission when our message doesn’t reach the ears of the nation: We are prepared to call BS,” she cried.

That speech seemed to change how the world’s media covered this latest shooting – instead of the killer being the main story, it became about the survivors who were fighting on behalf of their dead friends and teachers.

Dick’s Sporting Goods said it would no longer sell assault-style rifles – and Walmart raised the minimum age for anyone buying guns or ammunition to 21 years.

Image copyrightGetty/EPAImage caption Some of the main students from the Never Again movement (clockwise from top left): Cameron Kasky, Jaclyn Corin, Sarah Chadwick, Alfonso Calderon, Emma Gonzalez and David Hogg

‘They weren’t the ones who heard the gunshots’

As the movement grew, its opponents became more enthusiastic in their opposition. Much of it came online.

The main figureheads of Never Again were accused of being “crisis actors”, put up by the anti-gun lobby to try to ban guns.

They were told that it was too soon, and that they were disrespecting their deceased friends and teachers by making this a political movement.

They were told to leave the serious stuff to the adults.

Florida State Representative Elizabeth Porter said: “Do we allow the children to tell us that we should pass a law that says ‘No homework?'”

“We understand we’re just kids, but they can’t tell us that what we’re advocating is not right just because we’re too young.

“They weren’t the ones who heard the gunshots, they weren’t the ones who ran, they weren’t the ones who hid in closets, who hid behind desks, they weren’t the ones who were shot at, and they weren’t the ones who witnessed their peers die right in front of them. So they don’t have a say.”

Image copyrightGetty Images

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Media captionParkland 17: Empty desks a memorial to students killed

Political progress

The momentum rolled on.

On 6 March, less than three weeks after the shooting, Florida senators voted to raise the age to buy a firearm from 18 to 21 and require a three-day waiting period for most weapons.

Three days later it was signed off by the governor of Florida.

If you were in doubt that this was as a direct result of political action by the students in the Never Again movement, the bill is called the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act.

Image copyrightJoe Raedle

A new normal

Just over a month on from the attack on their high school, and the students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas are trying to get back to normal.

Russia’s EU ambassador has suggested a UK research laboratory could be the source of the nerve agent used in the attack on an ex-spy and his daughter.

Vladimir Chizhov told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show Russia had “nothing to do” with the poisoning in Salisbury of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.

He said Russia did not stockpile the poison and that the Porton Down lab was only eight miles (12km) from the city.

The government dismissed his comments as “nonsense.”

Retired military intelligence officer Mr Skripal, 66, and Yulia, 33, remain critically ill in hospital after being found slumped on a bench in Salisbury city centre on 4 March.

UK Prime Minister Theresa May has told MPs that Porton Down – Britain’s military research base – identified the substance used on them as being part of a group of military-grade nerve agents known as Novichok developed by the Soviet Union.

The Russian government has denied any involvement in the attack.

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said experts from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons will come to the UK on Monday to test samples of the nerve agent.

Mr Johnson, speaking to the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, described Mr Chizhov’s claims as “satirical”, adding that it “is not the response of a country that really believes itself to be innocent”.

He said the UK had evidence that Russia, within the last 10 years, had been developing and stockpiling Novichok, as well as investigating the delivery of nerve agents for the purposes of assassination.

Labour shadow attorney general Shami Chakrabarti reiterated Labour’s position that the incident was either a “loss of control” by the Russian state or a “malevolent directed attack”.

She told the BBC: “You’re not going to get co-operation from a state that’s deliberately targeted you but you might get co-operation even from a slightly embarrassed state if its lost control of its stock of chemical weapons.”

Image copyrightEPA/ Yulia Skripal/FacebookImage caption Sergei Skripal, 66, and his daughter Yulia, 33, are in a critical condition in hospital

Mr Chizhov told the BBC that Mr Skripal could “rightly be referred to as a traitor” but “from the legal point of view the Russian state had nothing against him”.

Asked how the nerve agent came to be used in Salisbury, he said: “When you have a nerve agent or whatever, you check it against certain samples that you retain in your laboratories.

“And Porton Down, as we now all know, is the largest military facility in the United Kingdom that has been dealing with chemical weapons research.

“And it’s actually only eight miles from Salisbury.”

But pressed on whether he was suggesting Porton Down was “responsible” for the nerve agent in the attack, Mr Chizhov said: “I don’t know. I don’t have any evidence of anything having been used.”

He said a number of scientists who claim to be responsible for creating some nerve agents “have been whisked out of Russia and are currently residing in the United Kingdom” but no stockpiles of chemical weapons had left the country after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

He added that there were “no stockpiles whatsoever” of nerve agents left in Russia.

Russia, he said, stopped producing chemical weapons in 1992 and destroyed all of its stockpiles last year.

The Foreign Office said there was “not an ounce of truth” in Mr Chizhov’s suggestion of a link to Porton Down.

A spokesperson said: “It’s just another futile attempt from the Russian state to divert the story away from the facts – that Russia has acted in flagrant breach of its international obligations.”

Russia ‘manipulation’

Mr Chizhov’s comments come after a Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman said the UK was one of the most likely sources of the nerve agent, along with the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Sweden or possibly the United States.

Maria Zakharova said a large number of ex-Soviet scientists had gone to live in the West, “taking with them the technologies that they were working on”.

Czech foreign minister Martin Stropnicky said the claims were “unsubstantiated” and “a classic way of manipulating information in the public space”, while Sweden also “forcefully” rejected the suggestion.

Chemist Vil Mirzayanov, who revealed the existence of Novichok in the 1990s and later defected to the United States, said he was convinced Russia created the substance used in the attack.

He told the BBC: “Russia is the country that invented it, has the experience, turned it into a weapon. This is the country that has fully mastered the cycle.”

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Media captionA look around Porton Down, Britain’s military research base in to chemical and biological attacks

On Saturday, the Russian foreign ministry said UK staff would be expelled from Moscow within a week, in response to Britain’s decision to expel 23 Russian diplomats.

It also said it would close the British Council in Russia, which promotes cultural ties between the nations, and the British Consulate in St Petersburg.

The UK foreign secretary will meet his EU counterparts and Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg for talks in Brussels on Monday.

Mr Stoltenberg said he expects Germany’s Angela Merkel and other leaders to reassess their response to Russia at the next Nato summit in July.

He told German newspaper Welt am Sonntag: “Salisbury follows, by all appearances, a pattern we’ve observed for some years – Russia is becoming more unpredictable and more aggressive.”

Theresa May said the UK government would consider its next steps “in the coming days, alongside our allies and partners”.

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Media captionTheresa May: “We will never tolerate a threat to the life of British citizens and others on British soil”

She said: “Russia’s response doesn’t change the facts of the matter – the attempted assassination of two people on British soil for which there is no alternative conclusion other than that the Russian state was culpable.”

Addressing the Commons last week, Mrs May said the decision to point the finger at Moscow was also based on “Russia’s record of conducting state-sponsored assassinations and our assessment that Russia views some defectors as legitimate targets for assassinations”.

On Saturday, counter-terrorism police renewed their appeal for sightings of Mr Skripal’s burgundy BMW 320D saloon car, registration HD09 WAO, in Salisbury on the morning of Sunday, March 4.

Snow and ice are causing further disruption to road, rail and air travel in parts of the UK.

A Met Office amber warning of a possible risk to life is in place in south-west England, south-east and mid-Wales and the West Midlands all day.

Police say driving conditions are poor, with no safe routes across the Pennines and snow ploughs dispatched to the M62.

Lincolnshire Police said up to 35 vehicles were stuck overnight in snow drifts on the A158 near Edlington.

Officers spent seven hours digging and towing out all of the stranded vehicles on the stretch of road between Baumber and Horncastle.

Meanwhile, Bristol airport has closed until 12:00 GMT due to the weather.

Other airports, including Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted and Luton, have urged passengers to check flight information before travelling due to possible disruption.

Great Western Railway, South Western Railway and Great Northern Rail have all reported delays and cancellations. Customers are encouraged to check National Rail Enquiries before leaving home.

Among the disruption caused by snow and ice:

There are no trains between Bedwyn and Newbury until 13:00 GMT, or between Exeter and Barnstaple until 12:00 GMT

South Western Railway warned freezing temperatures were causing numerous points failures, including at Eastleigh and Aldershot

Some rail replacement buses around Manchester are unable to run

Many roads have been blocked by snow and stranded vehicles, including the A38 northbound between Birmingham and Burton, the A3 southbound at Thursley, and the A331 Blackwater Valley Relief road

The Anglo-Welsh Cup final is one of a number of sporting events postponed

The Met Office’s amber warning for parts of Wales and south-west England will remain in place until 21:00 GMT.

Parts of south-west England could are likely to see 5-10cm of snowfall with the possibility for 15-25cm of snow on higher ground, particularly in Dartmoor.

Yellow “be aware” warnings for snow and ice affect much of the England and Wales, central and south-west Scotland and parts of Northern Ireland until Sunday evening.

Temperatures in the Scottish Highlands could drop as low as -8C later in the day.

Richard Leonard, Highways England’s head of road safety, said while gritters would be treating the roads “it is still important to drive to the conditions when snow is forecast”.

Cheshire Police warned there is currently “no route to safely cross the Pennines into Cheshire”. The A54, A537 Cat and Fiddle and B5470 are all closed or blocked by snow.

Bus company First South Yorkshire has been forced to cancel a number of services across the region due to conditions on the roads. Sheffield, in particular, is badly affected.

Skip Twitter post by @Gatwick_Airport

Flights are arriving and departing from Gatwick as normal. We have had some snowfall overnight so we recommend that you check the status of your flight with your airline and also allow extra time for your journey to the airport if needed.

— Gatwick Airport LGW (@Gatwick_Airport) March 18, 2018

End of Twitter post by @Gatwick_Airport

More than 100 flights to and from Heathrow were cancelled on Saturday and the airport warned of the potential for more disruption on Sunday.

“We’ve worked with our airlines to consolidate Sunday’s flight schedule, moving passengers on to fewer flights,” a spokesman said.

Gatwick said passengers should check the status of their flights and also allow extra time for their journey to the airport.

Sunday’s City of Lincoln 10km run has been postponed after organisers deemed it “unsafe” due to poor weather. The Shrewsbury 10km run has also been called off, as have half marathons in Reading, Wigan and Wilmslow.

There will be no horse racing in Britain on Sunday as both Carlisle and Ffos Las were forced to abandon events due to the weather.

Football has also been affected with Derby’s Championship match against Cardiff being postponed.

The surrounding areas of Pride Park have been left in an unsafe condition following heavy overnight snowfall.

BBC Look North’s Sport Relief ‘Big 50 Sofa Challenge’ has been postponed due to heavy snow in West Yorkshire.

Presenters of the regional TV news programme were due to push the red Look North sofa 10 miles from Bradford to Haworth, but organisers called it off due to “treacherous” conditions.

The wintry snap dubbed the “mini beast from the east” brought the heaviest snow showers on Saturday to north-east England and the North Midlands, as well as parts of southern England – including Hampshire, Sussex and Kent.

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Media captionNo paws in the snow?Image copyrightPAImage caption Roads across the UK have been blocked by stranded vehicles

A cold spell nicknamed “the Beast from the East” saw much of the UK and Europe blanketed in snow at the start the month.

Image copyrightMet OfficeImage caption Met Office weather warnings are in place for Sunday